


What Happens While On Assignment

by fructoselollipop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1455103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fructoselollipop/pseuds/fructoselollipop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dragonacesg7 prompted: May/Coulson, quiet moment, remembering a fun incident from their past</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens While On Assignment

“Do you remember Okinawa?”

May snorts and takes another drink of her scotch, but doesn’t reply, and, as always, Coulson takes that as permission to continue.

They were sitting together on the couch, drinking and not saying much to each other (hardly out of the norm for them), when the three younger agents joined them and Coulson, being the dad that never was, opened up his endless bag of war stories to tell.

At first they were mostly interested in what the Avengers were like, but the conversation changes course when Fitz asked, “What about you, May? Surely the Cavalry has some great stories, too.”

Skye elbowed him hard at that point, but Coulson could already feel May ready to pull away from them. She was likely only moments away from retreating back to the cockpit, when he recalled what they both agreed was their favorite mission together.

“Ooh, Okinawa!” Simmons says with great interest, taking a piece of popcorn from the bowl (Fitz couldn’t resist making some). “What happened there?”

Coulson takes a moment to appreciate that this is the first time the five of them have all sat down and spent some together since Ward. He plans to cherish it, even if it means embarrassing himself (and May too, though to a markedly lesser degree).

“So May and I were assigned to track down a man we suspected to have special powers. He’d managed to give the team originally sent to perform the index evaluation the slip and gone on the lam. He was some anti-government conspiracy nut and didn’t much like SHIELD showing up on at his front door.”

“What were his powers?” Skye asked.

Coulson glances at Melinda and finds her eyes are on him. “I’m getting to that,” he tells them. “Now, this guy was smart. He used his credit card to make a purchase online using a laptop loaded with viruses, and within hours it was being used all over the world. Italy, China, Puerto Rico. To call it a goose chase would have been generous. Obviously he ditched the card himself, but HQ still wanted us to check out every place his card had been pinged.”

“There are much easier ways to authenticate those purchases,” Skye observes while Fitz nods his agreement.

“Yes, well, _somebody_ had gotten themselves in hot water with the top brass at the time, and, well, I still think the assignment was punishment.”

“ _Somebody_ , sir?” Jemma says disbelievingly.

Coulson can tell the two scientists firmly believe that he’s referring to himself, but Skye is looking at May, who, in turn, is staring most resolutely into her scotch glass. He merely smiles innocently. “Not naming names.”

“Of course you’re not,” Fitz says, exchanging a knowing (or _unknowing_ as it were) look with Simmons. “Anyway, go on.”

“Right, so, it’d been about a week without a fresh or credible lead. We were hoping that big SHIELD would relegate the assignment to a lower level field team since there was no actual evidence that he was gifted. But, they were convinced that because he ran he had something to hide, and it remained our case. Finally, we caught a break. Someone had found our guy’s passport lying on the sidewalk in a suburb just outside Tokyo, turned it in to the local authorities. Naturally, we followed. Staked out the police station for two days, in case he showed up looking for it.”

“But he didn’t, right?” Fitz interjected, his enthusiasm showing. “There’s no way it was that easy, right?”

Here Coulson has to be delicate. He can already feel Melinda’s eyes burning into his scalp without turning around to look at her. “Well… actually, he did show up, but we didn’t manage to catch him.”

“What happened?” Skye asked. “Ooh, was his super power invisibility or something?”

“No, nothing like that. We just happened to be looking the other way when he came in.”

“Well, what about when he came out?” Simmons that time.

Coulson is used to uncomfortable situations and not cracking under pressure, but this is a whole different deck of cards. His neck is starting to burn. “We were still… distracted then too.”

“Was his power super speed?” Skye guesses this time. “Or did he create a diversion or something?”

Skye has an active imagination, but, thankfully, not active enough. Somewhere to his right, May clears her throat and he presses on. “Yes, there was a diversion. In any case, we missed our window. But, the police offers were able to give us a few details about our guy. They said he had mentioned he needed his passport because he was going to visit the hot springs in Okinawa next and planned to head back to the states right after. So, we decided we’d try and catch him with his pants down at the hot springs.”

“Are you sure you two just didn’t want to sample the hot springs yourself?” Jemma asks jokingly.

Coulson forces a laugh and looks round at May. Her face might appear blank, but he can read her expression. He’s feeling much the same: _why are we attempting to tell this story, again?_

“What, these two?” Fitz says presently with a laugh. “Slack off on company time? That’s a laugh! You know as well as I do Agent May has never taken a vacation day since she started working for SHIELD.”

Actually, that is true, which might explain why what happened in Okinawa… happened in Okinawa. But, Coulson doesn’t say that out loud. Instead, he continues, “Anyway, we went ahead to the island, started scoping out some of the hotels and guest houses where our friend might stay. It was a tall order. There’s lots of things to do in Okinawa, besides just visit the hot springs, and we didn’t know how our guy was paying for anything, if he was using an alias, or where he had any inclination of staying.”

“So how did you find him?”

_Thanks for the vote of confidence Skye_ , Coulson thinks, suppressing a smile. “Well, we did our best with the limited resources we had. We paid off an attendant at each of the hot springs to call us in case he showed up, and we… went undercover. We spent a week going to all the different tourist attractions, dining out, stayed each night in a new hotel –“

“You _were_ slacking off on company time!” Simmons shouts, half-disbelieving, half-amused.

“May hates going undercover, remember?” Skye reminds her. “Besides can you imagine her laying on the beach in a bikini, scoping out targets?”

“Skye, she’s sitting right there,” Fitz says in a dramatic whisper.

May’s not offended. In fact, she’s doing her best to keep a straight face, and having much better luck at it than Coulson.

“Well, like I said, after a week playing tourist, hoping to get the drop on our guy, we get a call from Agent Blake. Turns out the guy had already come to Okinawa and left again, was back on US soil, _and_ in SHIELD custody. Oh, and, as it happened, he didn’t have any super powers. He was just a normal guy with a serious paranoia about the government in general. And when big SHIELD found out we had basically just spent six days more or less on vacation on the company’s dime… well, we got a lot of crap assignments for a while after that.”

A stunned silence follows this latest revelation during which the three younger agents stare open mouthed at the two elder ones. Coulson wonders if they realize there’s nothing else to tell.

“Uh, the end.”

“What, that’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it? We didn’t catch him. We got in trouble.”

“That was the most boring story ever!” Skye complains. “Nothing happened. Literally nothing happened. The guy didn’t even have powers! How is does this even quality as a story in the first place?”

Coulson swivels his head back around to look at Melinda and they share a smile. “I guess you just had to be there.”


End file.
